


The 22nd

by pressedviolets



Category: One Direction (Band)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-18
Updated: 2013-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-05 02:21:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1088458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pressedviolets/pseuds/pressedviolets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five years after One Direction, Harry is a pre-med student at an American university. The boys are all doing different things with their lives. When crisis hits and brings them back together, Harry is reluctant to see the person he's been trying to avoid all these years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The 22nd

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this at 2 AM this morning but was too tired/lazy to post, so here it is now.

One, it’s finals week. Harry is surrounded by textbooks, printed papers and scribbled notes. His apartment was never quite tidy to begin with, but now it’s an absolute disaster. Not only has he not bothered to clean the place up since Sunday, he also hasn’t showered or changed his shirt in two days. Not to mention his kitchen is overflowing with dirty dishes, frozen dinner containers and empty pizza boxes.

Two, it’s four o’clock in the morning. He hadn’t proper slept for most of the term, but his sleep pattern had reached an all time low since the week had started. He had slept for a total of three hours the previous day and not at all the day before that. He was running on several hours of no sleep, plus his coffee pot had broken down about an hour ago and he had nothing to keep him energized throughout the remaining early morning hours. By now he was seriously considering taking a two-hour long nap and resuming his work later when he felt more rested.

Three, Harry’s last exam is in the morning. He’s really better off spending the rest of the night cramming so that he can be ready, but his eyelids are drooping and he really thinks he can’t do it. He wished he was like Niall, who decided he would be perfectly alright with living off of his earnings from their band days without a care in the world, or like Zayn, who could teach online courses without anything more than a bachelor’s degree. 

The last thing Harry expects to feel this time of morning is insulted. Tired, yes. Frustrated, absolutely. Insulted, however...he never saw it coming. When his mobile rings and it’s not even half past four, he wants to quit attempting to study altogether. It’s probably his lab partner nagging him for his notes. When he sums up the strength to peer at the screen he reads a message from Liam, which was odd enough in itself because he and Liam don’t text often except to say “happy birthday” and “merry christmas.”

‘Call me, please,’ is all the text says and later when he’s on the plane to Niall’s he feels ridiculous for not realizing something was wrong earlier. Liam, whom he hadn’t spoken to much at all in the past five years or so messages him at four in the morning wanting him to call. Harry blames the lack of sleep and the scorched coffee. 

Liam answers on the first ring and Harry hates how groggy he sounds when he speaks into the phone, though Liam seems too preoccupied to noticed. He croaks an almost irritated “What’s going on?” into the receiver. 

“How fast can you fly over in the morning?” Harry pauses before deciding he couldn’t have heard wrong. He’s so dazed that his reply sounds perfectly casual (“As soon as my final is over. Why?”) when really he hates Liam for choosing to call him at fucking four in the morning. He also hates Liam because he’s really not in the mood for a band reunion right now. He doesn’t want to see any of them in particular, especially not Louis. Besides, he wanted to spend the time recharging from exams by sleeping away the remainder of the day and half the next one. 

“Eleanor’s sick.” Harry stares at his phone because clearly someone here has lost it and there’s no fucking way it’s him. 

“Liam…” and he feels himself wanting to cry because sure, he and Liam aren’t nearly as close as they were before the split and yeah, Harry could be a dick sometimes, but he mentioned Eleanor to him and that was just crossing the line because Liam of all people should know what this entire thing was doing to Harry. 

When Liam backtracks and explains that Eleanor’s sick as in really sick, Harry freezes and listens to the rest of Liam’s words attentively, suddenly more alert than he has been for the past week. 

“We’ve all been helping him. Niall, Zayn and I-” 

“You’ve all known then. Were any of you even planning to tell me?” Harry snaps because he doesn’t know what else to do. He pinpoints this as the moment where he gets really, really insulted because do the boys honestly think so little of him that he’d refuse to help Louis out when he needed it just because it was Eleanor? He’s not that petty, he’d never been that petty…

Harry finds himself pouting, but stops quickly when he realizes Liam can’t see him. 

“How long have you known?” He doesn’t really want to know the answer, but he needs to. 

“Two years,” was Liam’s reluctant answer. 

Harry just nods. “Yeah, I’ll- I’ll be there later tomorrow. It can’t be first thing because I have a final, but-”

“Shit, I forgot you were in uni. Of course, I’m sorry-” Liam starts and under different circumstances Harry would have chuckled at how Liam-like he sounded right now, apologizing over nothing. 

“It’s alright Liam.” He wants details. How are Louis and Reagan and more obviously, how is Eleanor? But he doesn’t. He’s beyond annoyed with Liam and the lot of his old bandmates for walking on eggshells around him and not letting him help and for keeping secrets and he just hates them all. 

He and Liam hang up after five minutes and Harry is back to his dinky, humming apartment and piles and piles of paper. It’s almost eerie because nothing has changed and yet everything has.


End file.
